The trailer of sand permanently parked on our front lawn that me and my brother would play in with matchbox cars.

I remember my Berenstain Bears treehouse.

The wooden two story dolls house.

I remember family gatherings being loud and always with the same food (roast lamb, veggies, fruit cake).

Lime cordial.

Tennis lessons where I was one of the select few taken into a separate room to practice our right and left.

Salads only ever consisting of iceberg lettuce, cucumber and tomato. Cubed cheese made it fancy. Those weird dressings where fake herbs were suspended in the bottle.

A hidey-hole in the garden behind the camellias.

My very own play area under our house where I’d play schools with Wendy Walker (standing up straight).

The wallpaper in my room of teeny tiny purple flowers.

My womble night-light.

Isn’t it funny we have these memories with vast blackness between them. Why can’t I remember losing teeth and my permanent teeth coming in. I mean, that’s a pretty big deal. But nup. Not a memory to jog.

I remember a lot of stuff through the prism of adulthood, layering meaning where perhaps it doesn’t belong so I like these snippets, just remembering them for what they were.

outfits and shoes – my haircut which I hated – playing in the pool – my dolls…

http://allconsuming.com.au/ allconsuming

Oh the shoes. I had a red pair of Mary Janes that were handed down from my cousin. They were hard leather and cut into my feet. I hated them so much I did a poo in them and left them by the toilet. I remember doing it. Mum concurs with the story, I was about 3.

Bilkyroo

Haha hilarious!

Mary Canning

The distinctive smell of the canvas pool being filled up. Playing shops under the house.,boiled eggs and brown bread picnics by the water. Sunday mass. Reading freshly borrowed library books in the car and feeling car sick.

A pink shaggy humpty dumpty rubbish bin I kept by my bed, making whirlpools in our round backyard swimming pool, going to the shop with a note from Mum to buy her cigarettes, walking past a barbed wire fence on the way home from school and every day thinking I was going to trip and hurt myself on it, jam and cream sandwiches at Nan’s place, making mud pies, sitting on our garage roof watching the sky on firecracker night.

http://allconsuming.com.au/ allconsuming

OH FIRECRACKER NIGHT!

http://www.woogsworld.com/ Mrs Woog

Your childhood home is up for sale, if you have a spare 2.2 million?

http://allconsuming.com.au/ allconsuming

I saw that! I was wondering how much it was going for.

Linda

Afternoon naps on a chenille bedspread – the feel and the smell.
Great Aunty Grace’s yearly visit. She was a self proclaimed communist who shopped at David Jones, wore a red hat and would bring me a green marzipan “frog” cake (insert dry retching here!) She freaked Mum out but I absolutely adored her.
Sucking the honey from the nasturtium flowers.
Dad lighting the backyard incinerator every Sunday afternoon to burn “rubbish”.
Games of make believe that went on for ever and a day.
Filthy dirty bare feet with pink toenails.
Silkworms.
All of the mums in the street “putting the veges on for dinner” at 4pm and boiling the hell out of them for an hour or more. (insert more dry retching here). They all rocked at sweets but when it came to mains they did the devils work.
Being bitterly disappointed when Mum and Dad presented me with a new baby sister…when they knew what I really wanted was a puppy!